This blog is dedicated to next-generation computing, a term I have coined Computing 2.0. Increasingly artificial and increasingly intelligent, computing as a whole is undergoing radical change. How will the likes of artificial intelligence and augmented reality impact our natural world?

Thursday, 20 June 2013

Semantics Gives Computing A Whole New Meaning

In my previous article “Rise of Linguistics” I highlighted the increased focus on language technologies
by the big IT firms. They predict the future of computing is where humans interact
with intelligent machines through the use of natural language. And who would
argue with that?

Linguistics represents an entirely new software category,
providing super-intelligent tools to enable a whole new class of
applications. It is the door opener to a new era of computing and a
money-spinning ticket to the future. This futuristic branch of computing is based
on deep scientific principles – from anthropology to neuroscience, and a whole
lot more.

Make no mistake; this remarkable engineering
achievement will confine modern day computing to the dark ages. Computers
will no longer be hamstrung by the restrictions placed upon their own unique,
computer “language” – orchestrated exclusively by IT programmers. Instead,
human-computer interaction will become the societal-norm, driven by its new
interface, the human interface. The very fabric of computing will be changed
forever.

The upcoming adoption of Semantics, a sub-discipline of
Linguistics, will act as a proof point for this game-changing software
category. Semantics, in the context of linguistics, aims to infer the meaning
of language. This means that computers will understand human speech and text.
This means that machines will be able to respond in kind. This means that
Artificial Intelligence is coming…

Context, Context,
Context – What Do You Actually Mean?

This means the world
will communicate in one universal language thanks to real-time translation
capabilities, both in speech and text. The “language barrier” will become all
but a distant memory.

This means the internet
will evolve from a static, unstructured information repository to a living
artificial brain augmenting everyday life – providing you with knowledge and
insight whenever you need it most.

This means computers
will evolve from “dumb” terminals with one-way communication protocols, to
interactive machines with intelligent two-way dialogue. Say hello to your new
best friend.

This means everyday appliances
will be voice-controlled – buttons, switches, and physical commands will
disappear for good. You will tell your appliance what you want it to do. And it
will do it.

This means business
applications will receive a welcome face-lift as language capabilities
provide a new layer of human-like intelligence, the first of its kind.
Automation just got automated.

This means social
applications will become more instinctive, more interactive, more helpful. More
social. Your very own personal assistant awaits.

This means a whole
new class of applications will be made possible. Digital forensics. Counter-terrorism surveillance. Customer
(self) service. Expert-as-a-service. Everything-as-a-service…the list is endless.

This means Internet content will be automatically tagged,
linked, clustered and categorised – the semantic
web will move from concept to reality.

This means marketing will
undergo step-change. Customer data will be extracted like a gold mine – empowering
highly tailored, highly specific one-to-one communication, operating in
real-time. Every customer touch point will be redefined.

This means search engines
will be transformed overnight – keyword-based queries will be a thing of the
past as meaning-driven search pinpoints your exact intent. Say goodbye to endless
pages of irrelevant search results and say hello to precision.

This means multi-lingual
search will become the norm. Search queries will crawl data across multiple
languages, returning results in the language of your choice, of course. If it
exists, it will be found. If it doesn’t, you’ll not miss a thing.

This means analytics
will be taken to a whole new level. Masses of unstructured data will be bought
to life – content understanding, fact extraction, evidence gathering,
relationship mapping, sentiment analysis, concept search – impossible to
achieve through human analysis. Easy to achieve through Artificial
Intelligence.

2 comments:

This kind of thing is definitely fun to think about, but I don't think that there is any kind of acknowledgement of the amount of research that needs to be happen before we come to these points. To some degree we can even "fake it as we make it" in a lot of these frontiers already, but the focus on automated research methods seems shortsighted to me.

Then again, I'm pretty much obligated to say that, because I was trained as a Discourse Analyst, a branch of Sociolinguistics that you didn't touch on ;)

good point, there is certainly a lot of research and development that still needs to take place. i've been lucky enough to get some insight into some cool NLP stuff that is not yet available on the market - things are certainly hotting up in this space. in my opinion, the above realisations will be less about the tech, and more about the use case, application layer, design and UI - no easy task!

About Me

Jonathan Darbey is a future thinker, strategist and innovator with a passion for scientific-driven, advanced, disruptive technologies. He has a love of science – both fact and fiction – and the point at which they increasingly meet.

Jonathan has 10 years’ experience in high tech markets, including enterprise software, consumer electronics and medical devices, and an accomplished background delivering market strategies for a range of technology products and services.